The Action Axiom, true a priori?

[Seos]

For me learning and gaining experience is indistinguishible. Both mean actually the same.

A priori must by definition be independent from experience. So if learning and gaining experience are indistinguishable no learning is a priori.

Learning means gaining knowledge which is different from gaining experience.

But re your holographic humans, and the robots appearing to be human you mentiioned on the other thread: I feel there is something wrong in these examples.
You must have something that makes you rightly distinguish between humans and artifical humans, lookalikes/actalikes, but not the same. So I think one shouldn't use the latters to come to decisions about true humans('s actions).

The point of the holographic/robot humans is that in this possible reality they represent humans, it is not just that they are lookalikes/actalikes they are what we know as other humans. The whole point is that they are completely indistinguishable, by robot human I did not mean that they have the skin of humans and are robots underneath I mean they are completely physically human but they as I said "are not trying to achieve ends at all".

Now the question occurs to me:

"Humans act" has a subject and a verb. In which lies the a priori part?

Do we know a priori what humans are? And we synthetically know that amongst other characteristics they act?
Or do we know a priori what acts are, and we know additionally that humans frequently perform them?

I presume that that's directed at those who think it is a priori?

So it would have been wrong to ignore them.

Would have been?!

They where ignored and they slowly gained more influence politically away from the world of economic study until they had the influence they have today (or in the 80s) and they couldn't be ignored anymore. Is that what you want to happen with the Austrian School? Because it would suit them perfectly for none of their theories to be challenged and they can, like the Chicago school gain political influence. Then they can have their own Thatcher, Regan and Pinochet.

They were the consequence of ignoring the Chicago School, it may be the same for the Austrian School.
Either way, you're not doing a good job of ignoring them yourself.

[feargach]

They where ignored and they slowly gained more influence politically away from the world of economic study until they had the influence they have today (or in the 80s) and they couldn't be ignored anymore. Is that what you want to happen with the Austrian School? Because it would suit them perfectly for none of their theories to be challenged and they can, like the Chicago school gain political influence. Then they can have their own Thatcher, Regan and Pinochet.

They were the consequence of ignoring the Chicago School, it may be the same for the Austrian School.
Either way, you're not doing a good job of ignoring them yourself.

Errr, you realise the Austrianists came BEFORE the Chicago School, right?

The Chicago school grew from them, as the CS guys decided to take the broad anti-state thrust of the Austrianists, but strip it of the contradictory waffle, and place the system on a slightly steady mathematical basis, that had some vague connection to reality.

Austrianism has been around for almost a century, longer, depending on which books you consider to be part of the school.

It's taking a MIGHTY long time to gain adherents among people with postgraduate economics degrees.

You are obviously into philosophy. If a philosophical (non-economic) school started in the 1920s, was briefly popular for a few years, and then was widely criticised on dozens of seperate grounds, before being gradually dumped by all philosophy departments, would you be wildly interested to read up all about this philosophy, with a mind to seeing if it was spot on? Or would you approach with a touch of caution?

[Seos]

Errr, you realise the Austrianists came BEFORE the Chicago School, right?

The Chicago school grew from them, as the CS guys decided to take the broad anti-state thrust of the Austrianists, but strip it of the contradictory waffle, and place the system on a slightly steady mathematical basis, that had some vague connection to reality.

Austrianism has been around for almost a century, longer, depending on which books you consider to be part of the school.

It's taking a MIGHTY long time to gain adherents among people with postgraduate economics degrees.

AS will follow the CS in their political mechanisms. Yes I am aware AS came first that does not stop them copying CS. The whole point is that they don't need a whole load of people with economics degrees to agree with them they just need political power. CSers where never the majority of people with economics degrees (postgraduate or otherwise) but they did gain disproportionate political power to their relatively small number. Real world power of economic policy is all politics and very little economics.

You are obviously into philosophy. If a philosophical (non-economic) school started in the 1920s, was briefly popular for a few years, and then was widely criticised on dozens of seperate grounds, before being gradually dumped by all philosophy departments, would you be wildly interested to read up all about this philosophy, with a mind to seeing if it was spot on? Or would you approach with a touch of caution?

LMAO! You are obviously not into philosophy, it is full of schools of thought that where briefly popular and where then ditched and a good study of philosophy teaches about them all.

But anyway I not only approached AS with a touch of caution but with scepticism, so far I have had a few very interesting discussions with the ASers on this forum and found major personal objections to AS teaching.

[feargach]

AS will follow the CS in their political mechanisms. Yes I am aware AS came first that does not stop them copying CS. The whole point is that they don't need a whole load of people with economics degrees to agree with them they just need political power.
CSers where never the majority of people with economics degrees (postgraduate or otherwise) but they did gain disproportionate political power to their relatively small number.
Real world power of economic policy is all politics and very little economics.

CSers gathered a large and ever-growing army of postgraduate adherents in the 60s and beyond. That is why they managed to impose their will on the planet. You NEED to convince postrgrad economists of the validity of your ideas, otherwise there will be no professional economists anywhere able to be in a position to impose your ideas on the economy.

Right now, Austrian economists are like the Free Tibet folk, or the Legalise Now! crowd. Anyone with political pull will run a mile from them, and well he should.

[feargach]

It's strange that you find Austrianism interesting.

The whole reason it is ignored (having initially been carefully studied) by all academic economics departments globally is that economists looked at it and found it deeply uninteresting.

Their lack of interest was based on the 2 principal problems with Austrianism

One, most or Austrianism's assertions are equally applicable to totally opposite and incomparable economic outcomes and processes. The assertion tells you nothing.

All things being equal, the result could be a massive increase in wealth, or a crushing depression, and Austrianism's assertions are wholly applicable to both scenarios. Von Hayek himself wrote that economic theories "can never be verified or falsified by reference to facts". Useless!!!

Two, Austrianism's few actual predictions fail to materialise in real-life, testable situations. Please look up "Money illusion", the process whereby printing money creates an irrational "wealth effect" in the behaviour in the vast majority of consumers involved. This effect has been observed in both controlled lab experiments AND in real-world economic behaviour. A prime example is the consumer-spending splurge that arose in Ireland in line with the house-price boom, and has just evaporated in line with the collapse in house prices. Austrianists deny this "wealth effect" angrily, but you have seen it with your own peepers for the last 10 years every time you have looked at Irish price tags.

Economists look at these staggering departures from intelligent thought processes and deduce, correctly, that Austrianism is simply a cult with nothing of interest to say about any human economy. They toss the Rothbard book aside and get on with the real study of what happens when money changes hands in the modern world: economics.

[Akrasia]

[/LIST]I beleive the answer to this quibble lies somewhere in the realm of "thymology", however 20000miles has been too overloaded to persue this venture, which clearly requires more effort.




This is correct. IIRC Hazlitt tripped up here slightly here.

What I propose:

Human: A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens.
Action: employment of means to achieve ends over time

No surprise that opponents try to characterise these statements as meaningless, empty tautologies.

Those statements are meaningless empty tautologies


The irony is that people who claim they are engaging in logical and 'scientific' reasoning are resorting to circular methodologies in an attempt to bamboozle opponents and drag them into pointless philosophical debates (and I have a degree in philosophy)

The fundamental flaw in their ideology is the fact that they make 'assumptions' to prove their theory, but they can not support those assumptions, when they are asked to justify them, they resort to the kind of sophistry that would make socrates blush. (the 'socratic method' being nothing but covert sophism)

[20000miles]

Those statements are meaningless empty tautologies

That's what definitions are, right?

[Akrasia]

That's what definitions are, right?

ah, no. You don't define a cat as "an animal that is a cat"
Definitions are not tautologies, they are descriptions

Tautologies describe nothing, While the action axiom isn't strictly a tautology, it is just as meaningless.

[Hazlitt]

Hi Seos, twinkle, Akrasia,

Sorry for not being more of a contributer to this thread, I'm in the middle of reading a book directly related to the subject matter. You should all definitely read it. I'll post a few comments once finished. It's Mises last book "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science".

http://mises.org/books/ultimate.pdf

[Christel]

"Learning means gaining knowledge which is different from gaining experience."

How is it different?

"The point of the holographic/robot humans is that in this possible reality they represent humans, it is not just that they are lookalikes/actalikes they are what we know as other humans. The whole point is that they are completely indistinguishable, by robot human I did not mean that they have the skin of humans and are robots underneath I mean they are completely physically human but they as I said "are not trying to achieve ends at all"."

How would you know that they don't act?

And what about this: There are animals that look like sheep and are indeed sheep. They act.
I gained this knowledge from from experience.

What can you or others say against it? "Sheep act" is certainly not a priori. Is it different from "humans act"?

"I presume that that's directed at those who think it is a priori?"

Yes.